Where There is Evil

by Sandra Brown

  I boarded his bus by pushing hard on the concertina-style folding door at the front. My arrival was totally unexpected by all four adults who were grouped near the back of the vehicle, sprawled on the side seats. They did not even realize I was walking up the narrow aisle towards them, until I was almost there. My father and his conductress were grappling with each other in a way I had never seen before, while opposite them the driver of the other bus was locked in a passionate embrace with his clippie. In the few seconds I had to register the scene, I noticed that a pair of frilly briefs was hanging out of my father’s pocket and the woman’s stockings were round her ankles. He was clambering on to the seat just over her, pinning down her wrists with one strong arm. What on earth were they doing?

  ‘Their telly’s broken so I’ve come back,’ I announced.

  In the ensuing scramble, I was aware of my father’s furious, scarlet face looking over his right shoulder. He gaped at me. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ he roared.

  I raced back to my aunt’s house. When I sobbed out to her what had happened, she pointed upwards to the ceiling where her elderly mother slept and put a finger to her lips. She put her arm round me. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘Just forget it, hen, he’ll have forgotten all about it when you go back, you’ll see.’

  ‘But what will my mum say? He’s bound to tell her,’ I spluttered.

  ‘Bet you he won’t say.’ She looked at me knowingly. ‘And maybe best you don’t mention it to her either, Sandra. He married a saint when he wed your mum, you know. That’s what oor Jenny ma sister aye says, Alex merrit a saint.’

  With brisk efficiency, she began to wipe my cheeks with a cold flannel, and said, ‘Now, just you forget all about it.’

  Perhaps, after the incident at the bus terminus, my father was concerned that I might disclose the relationship he had with his clippie: a brief period followed in which he was pleasant to my mother. He should take her out more often, he mused, Mary needed to get away from the kids a bit. Bemused, my mother pointed out that I was not nearly old enough, at seven, to be left in charge of the two boys. He talked of arranging a babysitter, and although Mary dismissed this as more pie in the sky, he brought a thirteen-year-old girl to our home one day and introduced her as Betty. The young, giggly blonde sister of one of his colleagues, she wished to earn pocket money.

  Surprised, but pleased, my mother agreed it would be nice to go to the pictures with her husband and an occasional dance. A deal was struck, and Betty became a regular visitor to Dunbeth Road, always escorted home by my father. I looked forward to her visits, while noting with distaste the way my dad looked at her, particularly when my mother was not in the room. I came to regard her as yet another threat to my mother’s happiness, and began to show a distinct coolness towards her, which my father thought uppity.

  Betty’s visits continued as winter approached, but one Saturday she did not come. My dad, in a jovial mood, handed money ceremoniously to my mother. ‘Why don’t you take the kids and yourself to the pictures?’

  I jumped up and down in great excitement, because The Wizard of Oz was showing at the Garden near my granny’s, and I loved the story. My mother was pleased by his generosity, and the way in which he helped organize the two younger ones, putting Ian into a pushchair. All smiles, he waved us goodbye, and said he would have a meal fixed up from the chippie nearby for our early-evening return. We set off happily enough, arrived at the cinema, and paid our admission money at the kiosk. All was well during the Wee Picture, and Ian nodded off to sleep. Then the main feature began. While I was entranced with the Munchkins, Norman, who was three years younger than me and not yet at school, began to whimper, at first quietly, then louder.

  In vain my mother tried to hush him, glancing round apologetically. Maybe he would have settled down, if the Wicked Witch of the West had not then made her dramatic entrance. Norman’s screams of terror filled the cinema and Ian woke up and joined in. My mother dragged us towards the exit, which did not suit me. I chimed in with the howls of protest, as a frantic usherette hurried us into the corridor. Luckily, my mother knew her, and not only did she refund our ticket money, she told my mother that I could see another showing of the picture free.

  However, there we all were, turfed out of the cinema much earlier than anticipated. ‘Never mind,’ my mother said stoically. ‘Let’s just head home early for our fish and chips. At least that part of your dad’s treat you will get, Sandra.’

  We caught a bus from Whifflet up to Coatbridge. I ran on ahead of mum and reached our back door first. I burst into our small living room and froze. My father was with a little girl of about two, the child of one of our neighbours. She was sitting on our couch, half-dressed, with an expression of bewilderment on her face. Then my mother appeared behind me. An unholy row broke out and we kids were all bundled into the bedroom, and told to keep quiet.

  Just before Christmas in 1956, without warning, some men arrived and took our daddy away, witnessed by Norman. For several days, we were all in a daze and people refused to discuss my father’s disappearance. I was unable to fathom what on earth he had done now and I was too scared to ask. All I knew was that adults fell silent when I walked into rooms, whether it was at home, at Granny Katie’s in Ashgrove, or Granny Jenny’s in Bellshill. Voices dropped to a whisper in my presence, children acted oddly towards me at school and neighbours avoided my mother and huddled in small groups to murmur together. I began to think that whatever had happened must involve me, but I was terrified to know how. Eventually, I could not prevent myself from asking, ‘What’s happened to my daddy? Where is he gone?’

  I confronted my mother and grandmother as they sat sobbing together, and yet apart, in our living room, in which a Christmas tree waited forlornly to be dressed. My mother couldn’t look at me, and sobbed all the harder. It was one thing to see her cry, but odd to see Granny Jenny, a big strapping woman who had worked all her life gutting fish and butchering meat, crying her heart out. I was stricken by her face. She blew her nose noisily, then looked at me, her eyes puffed and swollen. She was wearing black from top to toe, and the material reeked of camphor. Had someone died?

  ‘Hospital,’ she croaked, ‘Yer daddy’s been taken awa’ tae the hospital, hen. Dinnae ask yer mammy any mair aboot it, she’s far too upset the noo. Ye’ll be telt all aboot it when ye’re a lot bigger.’

  I looked at her solemnly and nodded. There was a long silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, their whimpers and the occasional movement of great glowing cinders in the fire as logs shifted. My eyes fixed on the firelight, which usually fascinated me with its myriad pictures, and I rolled myself into a little ball, chin perched miserably on my knees. ‘Does it mean Santa won’t be coming to us this year then?’ There were cuddles of reassurance, and I was told that this year would be a bit different, but Santa would not forget where we stayed. The subject had been changed, but neither woman ever voluntarily told me where my father was.

  Reluctantly, I accepted what I was told. One day in the summer of 1957, I asked my grandfather as we picked sweet peas together, confidentially, ‘Why can’t I visit my daddy in hospital?’

  He looked at me quickly, then carried on cutting the twisted tendrils. ‘There are some hospitals children aren’t allowed to visit – d’you mind when Gran and I took ye on the train to see someone at Hartwood?’

  I nodded, all ears. My dad’s father was chief boilerman then at Bellshill Maternity near where they stayed, and I reasoned that he must know about these things.

  ‘Well, it’s a mental hospital – you and William had to play outside, remember? This is the same. Your dad’s in a mental home. They wouldn’t let you in, Sandra.’

  I absorbed this answer and suppressed more questions. I did remember the visit to some relative. It had stuck in my mind because, as we played in the grounds of the hospital, my cousin and I had seen some patients shovelling snow. As one bent perspiring over a spade, heaving
the glistening heaps into the front of a wheelbarrow, another was busy tipping snow out of the back. This had greatly appealed to the humour of two five-years-olds, but we were also slightly fearful of these souls who had been labelled ‘daft’, and we ran off as they approached us.

  For many years, I accepted that my father’s absence had been due to mental illness – which then carried such a stigma it could not be discussed.

  Chapter Eight

  In all families there are unspoken agreements about what may and may not be discussed. People live with the worry that in a moment of unguarded confidence, a dreadful secret might be disclosed that could never be recanted, and that might shatter the family.

  In 1957, children were kept in ignorance of sexual matters and few of us had effective strategies to deal with flashers, or someone touching us inappropriately on the bus or at the pictures. Then people avoided discussing sex with their children, through embarrassment. Facts had to be gleaned from playground pals, who were mines of misinformation. I was so naïve about the monthly cycle that when my best friend at primary, Carol Fairley, told me with a giggle one day that she had a period, I said in all innocence: ‘I’ve got one too – bet mine’s better than yours! I’ve made a great pattern.’

  Her shocked face puzzled me till it dawned on her that I had thought she’d said ‘peerie’. (We were very proud of these small wooden toys which we spun on the ground using a special whipping cord. They would birl for ages, depending on the skill of the player, and I had discovered from some older girls the trick of colouring circular bands of rainbow chalk on the surface, so that a really good shot produced a wonderful, mesmerizing kaleidoscopic blur of vivid hues.) Then she dissolved into giggles, until she realized she had a chance to show off her superior knowledge of what I could shortly expect to happen to me each month.

  Although my father made a brief reappearance shortly after my eighth birthday, on 7 January 1957, I was told by my mother that he would be going away again. She spoke in tones of misery, so I knew that I would not see him for a long time. This filled me with a mixture of relief and shame that I could not have explained to anyone, even if I could have found someone willing to listen.

  When he disappeared again, it was spring, and by that time the search for Moira was in full swing.

  What do I recall of the actual weekend of her disappearance? When my mother and I discussed it, many years later, our memories dovetailed together in the jigsaw of events. It had been a landmark for us both, and for quite different reasons.

  My mother said that my father had had an early rise that day, to take the miners to the Annathill colliery, then had been home mid-morning before going out after lunch to do a two until ten shift. She told me that she could recall that weekend in some detail because her parents had had a visitor from Australia. Grandpa Frew’s sister, Auntie Cis, who had emigrated years before, had come for a reunion. A family gathering was held on Saturday evening at Ashgrove to celebrate her arrival, and my mother was annoyed that my father had not arranged for someone to swap with him, particularly when he had already done an early-morning shift. She organized us to attend the party, then had to call it off anyway; like many others in the town, I had succumbed to Asian flu, which was sweeping Scotland.

  It was the first time I had ever been ill with a high fever, and I remember it well. It was not until Sunday, on cotton-wool legs, that I went unsteadily to my grandmother’s, having been off school all week. I was delighted to be given pretty handkerchiefs embroidered with kangaroos, from the Australian guest of honour. My mother told them I’d been put straight to bed with the younger ones, the night before, in the recess bed in the wall. At ten o’clock, she had debated whether to send for the doctor as my temperature was sky high, and she kept looking for my father parking his car in our yard.

  There was no sign of him, but she found that once she had sponged me with a flannel and water I was a bit better. Worried by his non-appearance when the snow had been so bad earlier, she decided not to go to bed but to keep an eye on me while she made some vegetable soup for the Sunday.

  It was nearly midnight before my father’s car drew up outside in the yard, and he let himself in. She told him about me and reminded him to go next day to say hello to her aunt. Then she offered him some soup. He said he was tired, and she noticed he did look exhausted, but the weather had caused mayhem.

  On Sunday, my father got up early and took the sandwiches she had wrapped in the waxed paper she saved from the loaves of bread we got at the Co-op. He went to work, saying he’d be back mid-afternoon. I arose looking much better, but my mother decided against going to church. After lunch, she thought I was well enough to go to Coat’s Sunday School, five minutes from our home, and she sent me off with Norman. As it was after three, she expected to see my father, but again he was delayed and she thought he must have gone to see Aunt Cis. When the door opened at last, it wasn’t my father but her sister-in-law, my aunt Betty, who, like Aunt Margaret, stayed in Alexander Street just over the hill. She was breathless with hurrying, and frozen, her legs mottled with purple and blue from the cold.

  ‘You’ve no idea what’s going on at our place!’ She threw herself on the couch and told my mother that men were combing the streets looking for a child, who had vanished the day before. ‘There’s men everywhere, all checking our closes and coal cellars, and even the bins. They don’t have any idea what’s happened to this wee lassie at all. Isn’t it terrible?’

  My mother agreed. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Someone told me it’s one of Andra Anderson’s lassies, the middle one,’ her sister-in-law announced, self-importantly. ‘Moira, I think she’s called, but I could be wrong. He works in the creamery beside me at the Red Bridge. I hear he’s worried out of his mind, poor man. If she’s run off after an argument, and caused all this fuss with the polis getting involved, then I bet he’ll kill her when he gets hold of the wee besom.’

  When we kids returned, it was to find them tutting in disapproval over their tea. My mother asked me if I knew the missing girl. I said I knew her wee sister, Marjorie.

  ‘Och, she’s bound to turn up,’ my aunt Betty rolled her eyes heavenward, ‘and I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes when she does. She’ll be for it!’

  ‘No, no, it’s her folks I feel heart sorry for,’ my mother murmured. ‘They’ll forgive her anything, as long as she’s all right – you know what it’s like when kids get you up to high doh like that. She’s probably shut in somewhere, from playing hide ’n’ seek. She’ll probably have just curled up and gone to sleep. You’re right, she’ll show up, large as life, and wonder what all the fuss was about.’

  But the days of searching turned into weeks. Aunt Cis left us, and though we never again met, her diary of the visit still exists with these events meticulously noted.

  My father went off the scene again, the first of many prolonged absences, and our lives settled into a hardworking, yet uneventful routine without him, but as my mother took on the role of a single parent I was given responsibility for things that today I would not dream of asking my young daughter to do.

  As well as helping to parent my brothers, I went cleaning with my mother, at Falconer and Prentice’s, the quantity surveyors’ offices, in nearby Church Street, opposite the side door of Woolworths. This made up part of the wages we sorely missed from my dad’s income. In those days, there was no income support or any single-parent benefit. On some occasions I went at dusk to these offices on my own to clean them though I was not yet ten years old.

  I thought the lives of my friends uneventful compared to mine. They went home from school to meals laid on by mothers who did not have to go out to work – then, the norm was for women to be at home. I do not recall any of my pals doing char work as I did. Yet while my mother treated me in some ways as an adult and confidante, she also protected me from what she saw as information that would taint me.

  On one horrifying occasion I was attacked and assaulted in Dunbeth Road. My aunt Margaret
was ill and my mother sent me to her house with some fish one evening. I trotted off, to walk a five-minute journey, one year on from Moira’s disappearance. Although it was dark, it was not late, just around teatime. Near the high school, a young man suddenly leaped out at me. I was knocked off my feet and I landed on my back. My hood slid down over my eyes and I could not get a good look at him, but I was overcome by two things: a horrible smell of Woodbines, and an excruciating pain after his hand shot under my skirt. I was gasping for air, while he muttered obscenities, and already I could feel a giant bump forming on the back of my skull where it had hit the ground. A sense of outrage shot through me and I let out a yell. A light came on in the porch of a big house, and the man ran off, but not before aiming a savage kick at me.

  Despite the noise, no one appeared. Shakily, I got to my feet and picked up my battered parcel. My uncle opened his door to a small, dishevelled girl, scraped and bruised, with blood tricking down over one knee-high school stocking. It was a good half-hour before they could calm me down with the obligatory cup of tea.

  ‘You’ll be OK, Sandra,’ my aunt murmured soothingly, after I had blurted out what had happened. ‘Your uncle Archie will walk back with you and make sure he isn’t still about, and he’ll speak to your mum.’

  We duly went home together, passing the police station, and my uncle and mother spoke in whispers as I got ready for bed. I waited for my mother to ask me what had happened. Instead, she gave me a cuddle, a hot-water bottle, and reminded me to say my prayers. She assured me that we would talk about everything later, when I felt better, then gave me a quick goodnight kiss. Adult voices droned as I drifted into sleep.